Too Late to Know

The cruellest torture of our lives is that we always have the time to do what we love, but not the foresight to know what we love. If I could rewind the clock, reset the day, force the dark present back into a blissful unknowable future, the irony would be that I would not know to act any different. When I was younger I thought the world would end by humanity’s own greed, a lust for comfort and luxury that would bring the oceans upon our doors and drown us in our short-sightedness. This would have been an easy end for me. Perhaps even preferable. When everyone is to blame it is easy to hide amongst the crowd of regret. But I now know the world didn’t end by sea, or fire or even ice; the world ended with the small metal locket now grasped tightly within my hand. 

My other hand rests upon the wheel of my land-cruiser, tensing and un-tensing, my knuckles bearing the first rays of the rising sun. The arid red land stretches out beyond me, irradiated and dead, the occasional tuft of green battling fiercely to keep its lonely crown amongst the dirt. The bitumen road is neglected, pot-holes and cracks slowly returning it to gravel. The car shakes as it travels over it, the wheels jittering and complaining. Tin signs warn of cattle crossing, faded yellow and black artwork covered in the same red dust that now blankets the car. 

Beyond this red horizon is home, or at least what remains of it. Returning now, flying down this seemingly-endless road, feels like a trip into my own past. Town carries with it an aura of bliss, conjuring memories of old timber and brick buildings, of festivals and long summers spent by the river. But most importantly, it conjures images of her. The woman in the locket, forever sealed shut. 

Kate. She and I were inseparable, a constant in a constant town. Kate loved to fish, a passion she had picked up from her dad whilst he was alive. It calmed her, sitting by the banks of the water she had known her entire life; in the quiet feeling his presence. We would sit together, lines out, toes wiggling in the ankle deep water waiting for a bite. It was in the muddy banks we found the locket, wrested from its hiding place as I tried to free a tangled line. The trinket was shaped in a heart, covered in rust and algae from its decades of submersion. I slid my hand down the small clasp on its side and its face opened. Whatever photo had once resided inside had long since eroded away, its memory flowing down the river into the sea. Kate smiled at me, ‘to be filled’ she laughed as she took it off me, excitedly studying its form. 

I set the locket down on the thin envelope on the passenger seat next to me. It gently rests there now, occasionally rattling as the car bumps along the road. I sigh, glancing at it one more time before returning my attention to the windscreen. I pass a black carcass on the roadside, long since worn down to bones, left as a grim guardian to the few that now pass through. The kangaroo skull seems to grin at me, in death immune from the cruel landscape at last. It astounds me that anything can survive out here, the radiation seems to permeate everything, the metal body of the car groaning against the heat. A bead of sweat drips down my brow and falls onto my lap, my neck reddening against my collar. 

This feeling of claustrophobic entrapment is a long unwilling companion. The desire to leave home for the city and the seemingly limitless possibilities it held was always pulling at me. My restless spirit could not remain, my small town was never enough for my younger self; too impatient to appreciate what I had. Kate knew this, but she never directly brought it up. Going to the city was always just an idea I talked about, never a concrete reality. Her life was firmly in the town, with her family and our friends. A desire to leave was as foreign to her as the city itself. Any suggestion that she might come with me only ever inspired a nervous laugh. She loved home too much. If I was to leave, I was also to leave her. 

The sound of the engine spluttering jerks me back to reality. The fuel light was flashing red, ‘warning: water in the fuel’. I stare it down hoping it will disappear, but it doggedly continues its message. I pull to the side of the road, engaging the hand break and popping the bonnet. ‘Of course this happens now’ I thought, as I exited the car. Pulling out my tools, I unwound the bolts holding down the fuel filter and pulled it out, grimacing as I pondered whether water had gotten into the tank (in which case I was in trouble) or if the filter itself was faulty. Preferring the latter scenario, I decided to replace it with the spare I had in the car. If Kate could have seen me now she would have laughed at my ineptitude, an hour wasting away as I set about my work. But when the engine choked back to life and the fuel flowed through the filter, the light disappeared. Small victories. My now sunburnt hands return to the wheel and I press on. I am not far off now. 

Around me the hellish landscape begins to be captured by flutters of green. Soon a thin layer of shrubbery has completely taken over the red dirt, and finally the silhouette of town takes shape. The last time I had been home this image had appeared at my rear, as tears ran down my face. My desire to leave town had finally become overwhelming. I had enrolled in a business course at a university in the city; farmer no more. Kate cried as I said goodbye, her blue eyes spilling the emotion she was trying to contain. She kept on saying ‘don’t worry I understand’ - even now caring more about my guilt than her hurt. 

‘I have a present for you’ she said, a sad smile spreading across her face as she looked up at me. Reaching into her bag, she produced the silver locket, now shining bright from polish and love. She had attached a new chain and rubbed away the rust. It was beautiful. ‘Something to remember me by’ she whispered, as I opened the locket to reveal a photo of the two of us smiling together. I knew inside this was the passing of an age of my life; a fork in the road that I now chose to travel down. ‘I love you Fred’ she cried to me, no longer able to hold her stoic resolve. ‘I love you too’ I replied, holding her one last time. Pulling away from my embrace, Kate at last said ‘If you love me then why won’t you stay?’ 

Why didn’t I stay? Why couldn’t I be happy with what I had? The city brought with it a new world but it was a cold one without her. Now it was all too late. The world had ended. Reaching over the centre console I turned the envelope around that the heart lay upon, its gold letters reading:

You are cordially invited to the wedding of:

Kate and Morgan

To be held 12 June 2021.

I gave up what most spent their whole lives waiting for under the spellbinding draw of the city lights. In following its scent I never considered that she may move on without me. And now I was to attend the wedding of the woman I loved, to a man that wasn’t me. 

The world goes on, billions of people continuing about their lives ignorant of the fact that mine is ending. Earth still retains its beauty, but to me it is a dystopian plain, wrought this way by my own decision. I chose this. Just as the previous photo in the locket had conceded to time, now so too did Kate and my smiling faces, turning first to memories and then to hazy darkness as time wears it away. The cruellest torture of my life is not that I didn’t have the time to find out what I loved, it’s that I did and I ignored it anyway.